As I have stated elsewhere on this site, my goal with this blog is to create a space where I can attempt to bring the world of flight to life with writing, combining two of my greatest passions to connect with others and share my experiences in aviation. This is not an original idea - aviation, over its short history, has a longstanding literary tradition. There is something fundamentally poetic about mankind's yearning to take to the skies, and since the days of the ancient Greeks and the myth of Icarus and Daedalus, or likely even earlier, mankind has been inspired to try and express this desire in words. Once the dream of flight became realized, poets, writers and dreamers were drawn to the ranks of aviation and those who learned the ways of stick and rudder or of slide rule and wind tunnel took up the pen to chronicle mankind's new perspective on the planet and the lives of those who built this emergent industry which had birthed flying machines from the realms of collective imagination.
Countless aviation books about flying, about how to fly, about aircraft, engineering, and weather have been published. With this list I have concentrated on the sorts of aviation books which appeal the most to me, which is to say those that express not just the experience of flight, but how that experience relates to what it is to be human; to live within the tradition of exploration and discovery; to feel the exhilaration, fear, and triumph of pitting oneself against the elements, against nature and physics; to doubt oneself and to have courage in the face of that doubt; to explore our esoteric relationship with the machines that carry us skyward.
Some of the authors below, such as Saint-Exupéry, have a catalog of great works, but I chose to include only one book from each author.
Full disclosure, I read most of these books many years ago and have done my best to summarize them, or capture the impressions I had of them, as best I could in spite of the fact that some of those memories appear as towns seen from many thousand feet above. I think that in the near future I may reread some of my favorites from this list and review them more thoroughly in future posts.
Until then, I hope that I can introduce you to some books which will mean as much to you as they do to me. Enjoy.
"I fly to release my mind from the tyranny of petty things."
` - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
1. Fate is the Hunter
- Ernest K. Gann
This autobiographical classic by one of aviation's foremost authors tells the often harrowing tales of Gann's experiences flying in the 1930's and 40's. It is a compilation of eighteen stand-alone stories about his flying adventures around the globe; from the uncharted depths of the Amazon, to crossing the Andes, to serving with the Air Transport Command during WWII ferrying aircraft across the treacherous north Atlantic and participating in The Hump Airlift over the Himalayas.
Each of these stories is woven together to create a narrative that vividly reveals the dangers that aviators of this era faced continually, and the cruel, arbitrary nature of the enemy that stalked them through the skies - Fate itself.
Gann writes with the assurance of a writer who knows his subject intimately and his compelling prose pulls the reader into his world.
2. Wind, Sand and Stars
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the poet laureate of aviation, crafted a book that is equal parts poetry, philosophy, autobiographical adventure, and a window into the seminal days of aviation. From the closing of aviation's open-cockpit era, this book resurrects the gilded epoch of the exploration of the world's skies. He writes of flying in the Sahara, Europe, and South America, regaling us with sagas of his own adventures as well as stories of heroes from the dawn of flight, all in his inimitable voice.
Granted, I found the details of some of the stories potentially specious, but this book stands near the top of this list as much for its illumination of the human condition as for its chronicling of aviation's past.
3. The Right Stuff
- Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe was not a pilot and he was not an aviation buff. In fact, this is a book more about the space race of the 1960's than it is a book about flying. Tom Wolfe was an innovator, however, and he helped create the medium that would become known as "Gonzo Journalism," along with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas notoriety.
The hallmark of Gonzo Journalism was that the authors put themselves in the midst of their stories and dispensed with the rules - grammatical and otherwise - of conventional journalism. In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolf applies that approach and his exuberant prose to the topic of America's Space program in the late '50s and the 60's. In it, larger-than-life characters such as Chuck Yeager and Neil Armstrong come swaggering off the page in an anarchic flurry of language equal to the roiling smoke and flames of a rocket booster on a launch pad.
4. Catch-22
- Joseph Heller
What to say about this one that most folks don't already know? It's a literary classic. It's pure comic genius. Oh ya, and there are airplanes in it.
Heller served in the U.S. Army Air Corp during WWII on the Italian front and drew upon his experiences there to create the cast of characters and the settings of Catch-22.
As Heller himself said of the novel, "Everyone accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts – and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?" This is the essential theme of the novel. As such it is not strictly about flying, or it would rank even higher on this list.
5. The Shepherd
- Frederick Forsyth
I'll refrain from saying much about this one for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's difficult to say much about it without issuing a strident spoiler alert. This story turns on its spectacular twist of an ending. Secondly, it's a very short read. Just read it, you won't regret it. Or better yet, listen to the CBC rendition of it by "Fireside" Al Maitland: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-shepherd-edition-2017-1.4455219/fireside-al-maitland-reads-frederick-forsyth-s-the-shepherd-1.4458378
This should be done on Christmas Eve with a glass of scotch in hand. It has become a Christmas ritual for me.
6. A higher Call
- Adam Makos
This is the captivating true story of a WWII bombing run over Germany and the bullet-riddled wreck of a B-17 staggering back across the North Sea to Britain, most of its crew wounded, its tail gunner killed, and it's young captain struggling to manhandle the hulking machine back home. But that is only where this miraculous story of human compassion begins. For it is also about the Bf-109 pilot that mercifully permits the B-17 return home, and the witness he must bear to the suffering of the German people as the war comes to a close. Most importantly, it is the story of these two pilots and their reunion many years later, after they last saw each other through the windscreens of their warplanes - two young men pitted against each other by forces beyond their control - when their eyes locked as the German ace saluted (chills), signing off and banking back towards his doomed country after having escorted the crippled B-17 out of German airspace - an act of mercy that would haunt both pilots for more than fifty years.
7. The Pathless Way
- Justin de Goutiere
As a float pilot, I need to include at least one homage to the romance of plying British Columbia's mystical West Coast in the sturdy workhorses that connect the remote communities nestled there at the end of foggy fjords and inlets.
Goutiere wrote as well as he flew, and through his words the reader experiences the subtleties of piloting Beavers, Grumman Geese, and Norsemen along the cloud-wreathed flanks of the mighty coastal mountains where they meet the sea.
This is a bitter-sweet read. Goutiere's poetic soul transports the reader through the reaches of this special corner of the world, right up to the book's tragic ending.
A tough one to find perhaps, but well worth it if you do.
8. Frozen In Time
- Mitchell Zuckoff
As a pilot who has ferried aircraft over the North Atlantic via the same route used by the crews in this true story of bravery and survival, I can relate to the challenges that would have been faced by the rescuers who had the unenviable task of trying to save a downed crew stranded on the Greenland ice cap.
An adventure story that straddles modern times and WWII, this book tells the incredible tale of three crashes: a B-17 being ferried to Europe for the war effort, the crash of a second B-17 searching for the first, and the crash of an amphibious Grumman Duck trying to extract survivors of the second crash. It is the story of the months long ordeal of survival of those trapped on the ice cap and the attempts to rescue them from amidst the surrounding crevasses and deadly weather of the arctic winter. It also tells the story of the search for the wreckage of these aircraft over sixty years later.
9. The Wright Brothers
- David McCullough
This is history as it should be written - engaging and thorough, it covers all the bases.
For anyone who has flown or who compulsively looks skyward at the sound of engines overhead, this is required reading. As it describes the seminal days of powered flight and the trials and tribulations of the Wright Brothers and their genius, this book humanizes these two men who realized one of the oldest dreams of mankind and changed the world.
10. Sextant
- David Barrie
I can hear you protesting already: "But this list is for aviation books, and this doesn't look like it has anything to do with airplanes." Ok, fine, you are correct sir/ma'am. But it's my blog and I loved this book, and I believe it does have a place in the legacy of exploration in which man's dreams of flight were born and nurtured.
I have written several blog posts about sailing and the connection that all pilots have to this legacy:
In essence, sextant is the story of what it means to be human and to find one's way on this vast planet amid the far vaster expanse of the stars by which mankind has been navigating since the dawn of time, a celestial chart by with pilots still divined their course and followed through the sky in the early days of aviation, before the advent of modern means of electronic navigation.
"I am plunging into the night. I am navigating. I have on my side only the stars."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A good list, and I am ashamed to admit that I did not know "The Shepherd" was written by Frederick Forsyth, one of my favorite authors. I've always just listened to the CBC rendition on Christmas Eve. As is tradition.